Summer Reading Review: The Leader’s guide

The Leader’s guide is a kind of follow-up of The Lean Start-up, a book which made the Lean Start-up one of the most trendy innovation method around the globe.

Lean Start-up by Eric Ries

I really enjoyed the Lean Start-up and it serves us, at INNOWEO and in the pro life of each team member to foster innovation while staying on a voluntary momentum of delivery.

Much harder to read than the previous book, The Leader’s guide is a big dive into innovation practitioners and project managers who decided to use this methodology at work.

Review

When it comes to compare my summer readings among them, one has to consider the real savoir-faire of US writers regarding this kind of books.

Clearly, The Leader’s guide is one of the best books about Innovation management and innovation projects I have read. It is not as clear and smooth as the Lean Start-up but what a collection of feedbacks, experiences and lessons learned: worthless!

What I enjoyed in this book:

The first chapters of the book, esp. « A primer on the Lean Start-up methodology » are among the most interesting chapters of innovation books I have ever read,

Sharing by practitioners of their lessons-learned is the most valuable things of the book,

Start-uppers AND corporate managers (« corporaters »?) give their example, not only focusing on new economy and digital. I especially value the sharing of Janice Semper (from GE), Cindy Alvares.

Lots of VERY VALUABLE INFO shared by LS practitioners!

Excellent chapter on MVP

Even more excellent chapter on how GE deployed Lean Start-up

What I less enjoyed:

The Leader’s Guide seemed to me much more difficult to read than the Lean Start-up. However the good organisation and symbols helps you to stay in and follow the demonstration of Eric.

Conclusion

One of the most impressive and inspiring book on Lean Start-up. Sharing the experience and Lessons-Learned is always the most efficient way to progress faster and achieve more results.
A good thing is that this book shares lessons-learned and experiences not only from the start-up world but also from SMEs and Corporate. That’s something really interesting from people like us at INNOWEO who are sharing this knowledge and experience with our customers. I found on the book things that we are already applying and things we will test (in the Lean Start-up way) very soon.